Craig Claiborne

Bill Aller/The New York Times

Craig Claiborne emerged from the Mississippi Delta to become the pre-eminent food writer for The New York Times. Mr. Claiborne is widely regarded as the father of contemporary restaurant criticism; his writings coaxed millions of meat-and-potato Americans to the table of fine cuisine.

Mr. Claiborne joined The Times in 1957 and for 29 years served as both its food editor and, intermittently, its restaurant critic. During that time, Mr. Claiborne, more than any writer of his day, introduced gastronomically sheltered Americans to the greatest chefs of France, Italy and Asia.

Through his recipes and more than 20 books, many with his colleague Pierre Franey, he encouraged home cooks to broaden their culinary horizons. Along the way, he created a widely imitated system of restaurant criticism that is standard practice today.

Mr. Claiborne’s reviews for The Times, which concluded by rating a restaurant on a four-star scale after repeated visits, were a striking change for American newspapers at the time, most of which considered restaurant reviewing a feckless adjunct of the advertising department.

Most influential of all were the rules Mr. Claiborne set for himself, which became the industry ideal. He was independent of advertising, tried to dine anonymously, and before passing judgment would eat at least two meals (later three) that were paid for by The Times, not the restaurants. Claiborne’s guidelines sent a message that he wasn’t an overprivileged and overfed man about town. He was a critic with a job to do.

Perhaps Mr. Claiborne’s most notorious gastronomic adventure was his $4,000 dinner in Paris, in November 1975, the result of a winning bid on a television fund-raiser. Reports of the 31-course meal for two built his reputation for audacity and panache but also garnered widespread criticism.

Mr. Claiborne retired from The Times in 1986 and continued to write books, to travel and to lecture. Perhaps his most enduring work is '‘The New York Times Cook Book,’' which was published in 1961.

When asked what qualities made a good food critic, Mr. Claiborne said, '‘The ability to write and a conversance with food.’' Both, he said, were instinctive. '‘I think you are born with a seed for making a sentence that reads well, as well as one for learning to be discriminating where food is concerned.’' Mr. Claiborne was confident that he possessed both. But he was also afflicted by feelings of inadequacy and racked by self-doubt, and the burden of constant reviewing weighed heavily on him.

In 2012, Pete Wells, the present restaurant critic at The Times, wrote: “As the current caretaker of the house that Claiborne built, I lack objectivity on this subject. Still, I believe that without professional critics like him and others to point out what was new and delicious, chefs would not be smiling at us from magazine covers, subway ads and billboards. They would not be invited to the White House, except perhaps for job interviews. Claiborne and his successors told Americans that restaurants mattered. That was an eccentric opinion a half-century ago. It’s not anymore.”

Mr. Claiborne observed everything when he was reviewing, but ultimately he judged restaurants by what came out of the kitchen. As this idea caught on, it became harder to confuse the country’s best restaurants with the ones that were merely favored by the aristocracy. A different hierarchy in dining, ordered by creativity and excellence in cuisine, was slowly taking shape under the guidance of a new aristocracy: an aristocracy of taste. Today, we call members of this aristocracy “foodies.”

A Mix of Flamboyance and Whimsical Spirit

Mr. Claiborne’s laconic and diffident manner belied a flamboyant, even whimsical spirit. He gave extravagant birthday parties for himself on ocean liners and in restaurants; and he frequently held the most lavish — and celebrity-studded — dinner soirees at his home in East Hampton. A man of robust passions and, at times, confounding candor, he wore his tumultuous personal life, including his homosexuality, on his sleeve.

Mr. Claiborne was born in the hamlet of Sunflower, Miss., on Sept. 4, 1920. His father’s financial setbacks forced the family to move several times, eventually to the nearby town of Indianola, where his mother, Kathleen, established a boardinghouse. It was here that the young Craig Claiborne became fascinated with the heady alchemy of cooking. Kathleen Claiborne was described by her son years later as a born cook, especially adept at the rib-sticking foods of the Deep South

While he grew up to travel the world, Mr. Claiborne always clung to his Southern roots, in conversation, in writing and in recipes. In 1987, he published '‘Craig Claiborne’s Southern Cooking’' (Times Books), which celebrated Southern culture through food. To the end of his life, the aroma of chopped onions, celery, green pepper and garlic would sweep him back to his mother’s kitchen on a powerful wave of memory.

A Notorious Dinner in Paris

The road to his notorious dinner in Paris began one evening in 1975 when he was at home watching an auction to raise money for Channel 13, the PBS station in New York City.

One of the prizes was dinner for two, anywhere in the world and sky’s-the-limit on expenses, sponsored by American Express. Mr. Claiborne bid $300, not expecting to win. To his surprise, the dinner was his. He immediately called Mr. Franey, and the two boarded a plane to Paris for a scouting expedition.

They chose a restaurant called Chez Denis, where the chef assured them that he could produce such an extraordinary 31-course menu. A few months later, Mr. Claiborne and Mr. Franey returned to the restaurant and sat down to a five-hour, 31-course dinner, a cascade of beluga caviar, foie gras, ortolans and truffles, parfait of sweetbreads, chaud-froid of woodcock, and a dish made from hundreds of sots-l’y-laisse, the '‘oysters’' found in chickens just above the thigh bone.

Among the wines served were a 1918 Chateau Latour, a 1928 Chateau Latour and an 1835 Madeira.

Details of the meal were printed on the front page of The New York Times. Reader response was immediate and angry. Nearly a thousand letters poured in, most of them expressing outrage that anyone could spend thousands of dollars on dinner when people all over the world faced starvation. Anti-Claiborne sentiment ran four to one. The Vatican pronounced the stunt '‘scandalous.’'

As testament to Mr. Claiborne’s legendary stamina, when the two left the restaurant, Mr. Franey turned to his partner and asked him to sum up the experience.

'‘You know what was so amazing about that meal?’' Mr. Claiborne replied. '‘I don’t really feel that stuffed.’'

September 24, 2014, Wednesday

“Craig Claiborne and Pierre Franey: Cookbook Revolutionaries in East Hampton” at the East Hampton Historical Society’s Clinton Academy Museum, includes more than 70 images, several hand-drawn menus, various cookware used by the duo and more.